In general, there are various types of disorders that can adversely affect (on various levels) an individual's ability to process information, or otherwise interpret what the individual sees or hears. For example, individuals with Autism or other forms of PDD (pervasive development disorders) can have significant cognitive impairment including an inability to comprehend the perspectives of others and difficulty in processing diverse information in context.
By way of specific example, Autistic individuals typically have difficulty recognizing and interpreting emotional information. Although facial expressions are one way to interpret a person's emotional state, Autistic individuals typically avoid eye contact and do not focus another person's face and, thus, may not learn how to recognize and interpret emotion through facial expressions. Even when autistic individuals are trained to focus upon another's face, a severely autistic person may simply lack the ability to read or interpret emotion from facial expressions.
In addition to facial expressions, a person's behavioral characteristics (e.g., the manner in which a person moves his/her hands or otherwise gestures, walks, speaks etc.) can be indicative of an individual's emotional state. However, it is difficult for Autistic individuals to recognize and interpret emotional state based on subtle clues from a person's behavior.
The inability of an autistic individual to recognize and interpret emotional state or other information while watching a movie, for example, is even more problematic. When an autistic person watches a movie, the person will usually fix his/her attention on specific details that are not related to main events, e.g. fix attention on non-animated objects. Even if an autistic individual is trained to focus on the faces of others, such skills are not sufficient to recognize or otherwise interpret emotional states of individuals in a movie scene. For example, if there are multiple people in a given scene, an autistic individual may not be able to focus his/her attention on the right person(s) during a current episode.
The ability to recognize or otherwise interpret emotions can even be difficult for individuals without cognitive disabilities. Indeed, a normal person may find it difficult to correctly interpret an individual's emotional state when the person is from a different culture. Similarly, differences in age (child vs. adult) and sex (female vs. male), for example, may render it difficult for individuals to properly recognize and interpret emotional state in a social environment. Thus, it would be beneficial to develop techniques that would allow persons to learn how to correctly recognize and interpret subtle emotions, and thus, develop skills needed for interpreting emotional state of people in a social environment.